Thrown To The Wind

To most people, garbage is about as far from art as it gets. To Beijing-based artist Wang Zhiyuan, it is a medium like any other. Some time ago he just started collecting discarded plastic containers from the dumps in and around the Chinese capital. He discovered that it was not difficult to turn these objects into something interesting or beautiful. Explains Zhiyuan, “I discovered that if you bring order to them, you can create beauty”. His impressive and colorful installation ‘Thrown to the Wind’, which he created two years ago, is an 11-meter high tornado entirely consisting of the plastic garbage he has found over the last years.

‘Thrown to the Wind’ is an example of what we would call the ‘Quantity Theory of Design’ — if your design lacks a big idea, just use large amounts of one element to construct it (for instance IKEA boxes, or, in this case, plastic garbage) and it easily looks impressive.

To reflect on the ecology and the biodiversity of two sites on opposite sides of London, art and research collective London Fieldworks built a sculptural installation in a two trees in the city. ‘Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven’ consists of several hundred bespoke bird boxes mounted in two trees, resulting in a true…

Some time ago I noticed a visual artwork on the roof of the GAK Gebouw in Amsterdam’s Bos en Lommer district, consisting of digital fireworks combined with flashing words that say “IK HOU VAN JE” (“I LOVE YOU”). I found out that artist Leonard van Munster is the man behind this light installation.

For their solo show ‘Moving Sideways’ at the Tang Contemporary Art gallery, the Hong Kong-based architects of MAP Office built a residential building for a community of 100 sea crabs. Their installation consists of 24 identical aquariums (four towers stacked at six storeys high) and represents a standardized social housing unit which you can find plenty…